Wednesday, 27 May 2015

Eating London: The best of the rest...

I've ended up at Bill's every time I've visited London. There's 18 of them in the city so you're guaranteed to never be far away from one. The food is nothing spectacular but it's good grub at a decent price with plenty choice for everybody - including vegetarian and gluten free options! So far I've visited the Covent Garden, Soho and Kensington High Street branches and enjoyed all of them! Their porridge is one of my favourite breakfasts ever. Bill's has now opened up a restaurant in Glasgow so those of us north of the border can get a regular fix too!

I first saw Bird on the @BreakfastLondon instagram and was intrigued by their breakfast doughnuts! It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea but Bird serves up lots of free range fried chicken, with chicken and waffles being their signature dish. The chicken is served on a cheddar and onion waffle with a side of maple syrup! Proper dirty, fast food. Gordon's burger came with bacon, cheese, shallots, hot sauce and maple syrup. It much bigger than he'd expected & he didn't manage to finish it! The restaurant is located in Shoreditch and was full of their finest hipsters. We nipped in for a quick dinner before our Jack the Ripper tour.

Bumpkin is another restaurant I've ended up returning to again and again. I wrote about the South Kensington restaurant here but this time we visited them in Chelsea. Both are great locations but the Chelsea one is nice and handy for the Kings Road area, plus it has the garden! It was a beautiful sunny Sunday when we popped in for lunch so the garden was busy. The hostess couldn't of been nicer or more accommodating though, moving things around to make space and keep everybody happy. Bumpkin serves up classic Great British comfort food and their Sunday lunches looked ace!

Some people visit Harrod's for the designer labels and fancy souvenirs... not me, I go for the food hall! If you're in the huge maze of a department store, make sure you head to the Patisserie where you'll find Dum Dum's AMAZING baked cronuts! Gordon had a chocolate and hazelnut one, and I tried to convince myself that almonds and pistachios made mine healthy. You can also find their range of artisan doughnuts at their Box Park Donutterie.

Put any Breaking Bad fan in The London Cocktail Club and I bet I know what drink they're ordering! How could you resist the Heisenberg and it's little bag of blue crystals? There are 7 London Cocktail Clubs in the city, each one with its own theme and individual decor. The Shoreditch one is a cool, chilled out biker bar, appealing to any Sons of Anarchy fan... I'm guessing these guys like their Netflix! We left LCC slightly worse for wear aftet a couple hours working our way through the impressive cocktail list.